


Rescuing Rowdies

by everythingremainsconnected



Series: The Supernova and her Rowdy Boys [4]
Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: (guess which point), Amanda POV, F/M, Gen, canon-compliant (up to a point), it all leads up to That Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-15
Updated: 2017-11-15
Packaged: 2019-02-02 22:01:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12735192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everythingremainsconnected/pseuds/everythingremainsconnected
Summary: Amanda's trying to just roll with the punches but they're coming faster than her ability to give a shit can keep up.





	Rescuing Rowdies

It hurt. Of course it did. It always, _always_ hurt. Every single freaking attack since that awful first time always hurt. Even when she was daring Vogel to scare her into a seizure and trying to find a vision, the pain was just… just about unbearable. It ripped through her body and sent every nerve screaming into the abyss until Vogel was there, hands out, mouth open, eating the trauma and opening her mind.

God, if only the visions _meant_ something - anything - that she understood. Amanda had never felt so dumb in her whole life. It was like having the answer for a test behind frosted glass, just out of reach. No matter how much she squinted and stretched toward the goal, it was never any clearer. Never any nearer. She wanted to scream. 

Amanda laid down on the train tracks and barely kept from throwing up. As much as she’d tried to convince Vogel that it was all going to be fine, Amanda had no way of knowing. She hoped, more than she’d ever thought possible, that she was right. It _felt_ right in a way that made literally no sense to her logical brain, but Amanda was trying more and more to turn that logic bullshit off. It just got in the way of finding the guys, of finding their way home. 

The train thundered over her. The sound tore her eardrums apart. Iron screeched and tracks shuddered. Amanda’s whole world was noise and terror and the train ripped her face in half. Her skin cleaved open. Bones cracked and broke. Searing white-hot agony was freaking batshit everywhere and it was never going to _stop_ \- til Vogel breathed in deep and took it all away leaving a rush of motion and noise. There were flashing scenes and nothing made sense and Amanda frantically tried to cling to something to remember. One single image burned in her mind’s eye and she couldn’t forget it even if she tried. 

_Martin_. 

He looked different, sick somehow, and his glasses were gone. His eyes snapped open and he gasped and - and he was tied to something. But he was alive. Amanda’s heart leapt in her chest. If Martin was alive then the others might be too. Had he seen her? For a few seconds after, with the buzz of the vision, there was almost music in her head again. Almost. 

“I know where to go.” 

Later that night, as she and Vogel huddled together in the car’s backseat and tried to sleep, Amanda kept that memory close. She had seen Martin and a splinter of her heart hoped that he’d seen her too. Something worried her about that hope; it was so hard to tell what was wishful thinking and what was something deeper and inexplicable trying to tell her the hope was real. Eventually Amanda fell into troubled sleep, painfully aware of the cold around her that Vogel couldn’t fill on his own. 

* 

Meeting the guys had been the best and worst thing that ever happened. Amanda’s life was changed - some might say thrown into total chaos - from the minute she’d noticed the van outside her place. Something in her reached for that van. She wanted it. Whatever it was, she didn’t care; it promised to be better than the stagnant plain-oatmeal-graham-cracker-flavoured existence she’d been inhabiting. Every time she’d glanced at the busted van her heart had sung, soaring in hope. For the first time in - she couldn’t remember how long - Amanda had music in her bones, propelling her onward and forward and out of her comfort zone. 

Out the door and down the street, humming as she went, finding that her bones held _strength_ and her heart held _music_ and things might still be shit but you know what? It’d be shit on _her_ terms for once. Maybe more than once. How one shitty van had given Amanda a nudge out her front door was a problem for another day. She tried not to think too hard about why her entire being beat in time to the music from the van or why she actually wanted to dance for the first time in forever. Pretty much since her first attack the music had left her, only making an appearance whenever Todd visited and they played together. When that van had rolled down her street a faint drumbeat had rolled to life in her heart. 

Life had started again that day. Being around the guys made her feel... _light_. Alert. She felt desire for things, for fresh air and _noise_ and freedom. Her heart grew and grew, hopeful and burning and full of life for the first time in years. The fire was answered in the face of every man in the van that day. Amanda had never felt so whole. 

Before she even had a chance to exhale it had all been ripped away and nothing had ever hurt more than those three words. 

_Go on. Get!_

Well, nothing until the thirtieth pararibulitis attack, deliberately brought on by a goddamn freight train, but that was only the body. Once Vogel ate it, the pain was gone. He couldn’t eat the soul-hurt of being sent away and left almost alone. The soul-hurt that threatened to overwhelm her in dark times, while Vogel slept in her arms and things were hopeless, more than hopeless, and her heart was heavy and slow and there wasn’t any music left. 

* 

Somehow there were reserves Amanda didn’t know existed. Music was gone from her body once again but every time she’d thought rock bottom had been scraped, something bit back. Flashes of light burst forth from the darkness and Amanda kept going, kept fighting, shoulder to shoulder with Vogel, she fought and fought. And fought. Fists up and flying over and over again to get to the guys, to get answers, to get to a place where the bullshit stopped for just _one freaking minute_. Finding the guys wasn’t the end of the mess but it was a safety net. The guys were music and home, and Amanda was sick of being scared. 

Falling through the bathtub and into whatever bullshit world this was, felt like just about the last straw - until being captured by guys wearing square helmets? Until the pararibulitis attack that Farson could see - until the attack had _attacked_ the square helmet brigade - until escaping and then getting kidnapped _again_. 

Amanda woke up and was fast running out of fucks to give. Rolling with the universe’s unending goddamn punches hadn’t worked, at all. She was no closer to the guys and no closer to answers and no closer to feeling that burning music again. No closer to finding her family. She tried not to think about how goddamn desperately she wanted them back. The thing in front of her - a person? - wanted to play stoned philosopher and Amanda sighed when she wanted to scream. 

_Who am I? Amanda Brotzman._

Wrong answer. 

_I’m from Oregon._

Wrong answer. 

_I got sick._

Wrong answer. 

What was she then, really? Beneath a name and a place she’d lived and a sickness she hated with every fibre of her being. All those things, noises that she had always used to refer to herself and define herself and contain herself. Under all that, behind all that, who was she? What was left? 

Everything else. The thoughts, the voice talking in her head, the ideas and hopes, the dreams, the music in her bones and the light in her heart when the guys were around - all of that made her, _her._

_I am the consciousness._

The thing smiled. _Right answer._

* 

Amanda put her hands in the pool and _looked_ and saw the colours and the flashing and - Martin. _Martin_ , again, his eyes snapping open, gasping. 

“My friends. I saw one of my friends.” Amanda’s heart soared. He was still alive. 

_Bring them here._

_Oh yeah, easy as freaking pie, just reach across freaking dimensions in your freaky dreams and save them. Sure. I do it all the time._ As Amanda’s sarcasm peaked, she saw her logical bullshit try and swamp the rest of her. Of course it was impossible to do - but her heart wanted to try so badly that it hurt. Amanda’s body thrummed with the edges of music again, so tantalizingly close, now that the guys were almost in her sights. She was close, the melody was right _there_ on the edge of hearing, but she couldn’t make out the notes. 

_Help me!_

With an added burst of strength, Amanda’s heart caught alight and drums beat madly in her chest and she _reached_ and _pulled_ and everything was blue and wet and - 

Cross leapt up out of the pond and ran to the cave entrance with Gripps and Martin close behind. Wearing all white and looking sickly as hell they headed straight for the daylight beyond. Tears burned Amanda’s eyes as heat radiated through her body. 

“Yo.” 

“Aw yeah!” 

Amanda heard the voices and the howling and shouting and the generally Rowdy melee happening outside, but it was just background noise to the music in her bones. She had done it. Actually done it. The guys were back. Were they real? Was any of it? 

On shaking legs, Amanda stumbled after them to see the Rowdy 3 decimate the box helmet squad. The electric blue of flowing energy lit the clearing as the guys gorged themselves. Sinking to her knees, Amanda grinned, exhausted, as her boys waged energy-sucking war. 

* 

The sun set. The party raged. Amanda’s heart exploded over and over to see the guys all together and happy and not sick. She danced around the fire, heart beating like the incessant drum she’d quickly grown used to around the Rowdy 3, her head full of light and pure joy. She felt it rolling out of her. The logical brain had shut up for the moment to let happiness reign and Amanda couldn’t keep the grin from her face. 

Amanda met Martin’s eyes across the fire. He headed right for her and she hesitated. It wasn’t just that he looked different without his glasses; it had been months apart, the hardest months of her life. What if she’d imagined the whole thing? What if those stupid logical thoughts were right, that there was no way she had any mystical connection to these guys she barely knew? What if the love she’d felt for them, and _from_ them, was just a stupid dream to keep her from giving up? What if - 

Martin reached for her and Amanda forgot to worry about logic. Her arms went around his neck and he lifted her easily, cradling her head and burying his face in her shoulder. Amanda felt his heartbeat against her, booming and warm, thudding in time with her own. Wrapping her legs around him Amanda could have cried. This was home and whole and Amanda was more alive than she’d ever known. 

Setting her down, Martin grinned. “Drummer girl.” 

“What?” 

“Wasn’t a question.” Martin tapped his chest with his free hand, the other determinedly holding on to her. “In here. There’s music when you’re here. I missed it. Missed you.” 

Amanda grinned. How did she even start to explain the missing pieces that had sawed gaping holes in her entire being for the last few months? Looking into Martin’s smiling eyes she didn’t bother. With a squeak she leapt at him again, clinging onto him, drawing the music of his heartbeat into her body and tingling at the contact. 

“Supernova,” Martin whispered into her shoulder. 

Pulling away to look at his face, Amanda started to smile. “Were you always this cryptic? What are you talking about?” 

“You,” Martin said simply, “you burn like the sun. We were in the dark so long I never thought I’d feel light again. Never thought I’d feel _you_ again.” 

“Yeah, well, get used to it,” Amanda tried to be cool, “I’m not about to let you go. Not again.” 

Standing right by the fire with Amanda in his arms and his boys dancing around him, Martin’s soul was warm for the first time in too long. He half-smiled at finding that his soul remained in spite of everything that’d happened. Wrecked as he was from torture and starvation and cross-dimensional travel, Martin knew exactly why his soul existed at all. Amanda’s fiery existence burned like a thousand suns and lit him up even as it pulled him all the way into her orbit. The softness of her skin and the strength of her every emotion certainly helped. 

An easy grin lit up Martin’s face and he pulled Amanda in close again, cradling her head and pressing his cheek against hers. “Likewise, Drummer. I ain’t lettin’ you outta my sight.” He breathed in deep, taking in the smell of Amanda and reeling at her energy, the sheer power of her, as that pounding supernova heart filled him. “I ain’t lettin’ you go.”

**Author's Note:**

> Alright y'all raise your hands if you're still deceased from That Hug coz same. I hope you liked it! Huge thanks to wishingnevergetsyouthatfar and Bri for helping with editing <3 [I'm on Tumblr](https://everythingremainsconnected.tumblr.com/), come say hi <3


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